


A New Kind of Memoir

by Jennytheshipper



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 11:15:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15242160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennytheshipper/pseuds/Jennytheshipper
Summary: Francis meets an old friend.





	A New Kind of Memoir

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter was written as part of the Tumblr Terror Fanworks Exchange
> 
> For @theos-left-eyebrow
> 
> Prompt #3 The moment when Crozier realizes he has feelings for Silna.
> 
> Note: This is more or less canon compliant to the mini and to the book where possible.

He is a middie again, starting from scratch, a spear and an ivory probe taking the place of compass and clock. To learn to hunt seal, one must first learn to fish the Netsilik way, to sit over a hole in the ice for hours, patiently waiting for your prey, spear at the ready, probe vigilant, clearing away the ice. The boy, Meemo and Hiqiniq’s eldest, leans against him, dozing. He counts the child’s even breaths to mark the time, occasionally checking his measurements against his watch. The sun drops to the horizon. He looks at his string of fish: two char and three of the nameless, spiny fish that no one but Silna will touch. Most of the Netsilik throw them back or keep them as dog food, but he plans to take them to her as a kind of offering. Before him on a low rise, about 100 yards off, he sees her with her lamp, pacing the perimeter of her yard, scanning the horizon, looking, perhaps, for the creature who will never return, pretending not to see him.

A splash in the hole grabs his attention, just as he is deciding whether or not to wave to her. Whatever it was has passed by. He leans forward, hearing the ice settling beneath him, a kind of groan. On the ships, he saw the ice as one of his worst enemies, here it is an old man, not a friend but at least a familiar.

The boy is awake and examining the line for himself. “Not a bad catch,” he says in Natsilingmiutut.

“In English.”

“Good …” casting about for the word, as if it will come out of the sky.

“Catch,” Francis says, helpfully.” “Catch.”

“What do you want with these?” the boy says, reverting to Natsilingmiutut, indicating the spiny fish.

“These are for her,” Francis pointing toward the igloo. Silna has gone back inside. The boy looks frightened. Shakes his head. “Angakok” or witch they call her. She has the power to bring spirits, to hurt people. To heal as well, Francis thinks. <i>What hurt are you needing to heal?</i> they may well ask.

A few minutes later and he has his light sled packed up with the fish, the gear, and the child. No mean feat for a one-handed man. He pulls them fast toward Silna’s igloo. “Aglooka,” the boy pleads. “Uncle Francis,” he tries.

“It’s alright. She won’t hurt you. I know her. She’s my friend.”

“Hiqiniq says angakok are not our friends. They do magic.”

“Well, then, it’s a good thing we are bringing a gift.” He parks the sled alongside Silna’s, reasoning that if a wind comes, the two lashed together will be more secure. The boy stands off to the side looking at him. Silna appears in the doorway and the boy takes a further step away, trying to make himself invisible behind the sleds. Francis hands her the string of fish, she slings them onto a rack just inside the door. She gestures for them to come in.

“I won’t be a minute,” he says to the boy and ducks into her house. He crawls into the main room, pulling off his mittens and warming his hands at a seal blubber lamp, which serves for light and heat. She reaches into a pouch at her waist and hands him a piece of salt fish. He chews at it, slowly working it from one side of his mouth to the other.

“I settled with Meemo’s people,” he begins in Natsilingmiutut, as if she’s asked him to tell her. “It’s not far. I have my own room, of sorts. I do my best to help out. Hiqiniq says that between the two of us, we make one good sort of husband.” He chuckles self-consciously, aware he is rambling. Silna nods. He notices she is distracted by something behind him. He turns to see the boy’s face in the doorway. He looks back at Silna, hoping she will offer some kind of invitation. It’s not his home and he’s not sure of the custom.

She smiles and motions for him to come in, which has the hoped-for effect on the boy, but a disconcerting one on Francis. He has only ever seen her smile once when she followed him in the dark of the long trek between Terror and Erebus. Thinking her a bear, or the creature, he’d nearly shot her with his pistol. Later they’d surprised Erebus’ trigger-happy watch and had both been fired upon. Francis’ stream of oaths had made her smile. He remembered wanting to ask her about it, find out what had delighted her in his curses, but he’d never had the chance. The smile on the ice had been mischievous and knowing. He marvels now, how her whole face changes from smooth and impassive to open and welcoming.

“Tea?” she asks still grinning at the boy. With the stump of her remaining tongue, every word is difficult to say, and equally difficult to understand, but Francis seems to know instinctively what she is saying on the rare occasions when she does speak.

“She asked if you want tea,” Francis says to the boy. Silna nods in agreement.

“Sugar?” she asks, though the word comes out more like “Shoe. Her.” The boy looks excitedly at her.

“Sugar,” he says in English. He could not have had sugar above three times in his life, but he knows the word well enough, despite Silna’s difficulties making the “g” sound. She empties a small basket of dried brown leaves, into a pot fashioned from one of the expedition’s many discarded tins. A scrap of the dreaded Goldner’s label is just visible above the soot that covers most of the pot. She reaches up into a niche in the wall and scrapes some loose snow into the pot, then carefully places it on a tripod over the lamp. The boy watches Silna’s every move but does not seem to catch where she hides the sugar. Francis suspects one of the many pouches she wears on her neck. Sugar traded to the fort can fetch a sled full of hides. She is wise not to leave it lying about. She drops a handful of lumps into the pot.

It’s gone dark outside. Francis checks his watch, just four ‘o’clock. They took tea on the Terror at four. On Erebus, it was half three. He never understood why there was a difference, only that it never changed, even when the two ships were split into walking parties. She couldn’t possibly know it was tea time, and yet, she must have observed the ritual hundreds of times in her months with the sailors. The small pot begins to throw off steam and she pours out the tea into three portions. Silna and the boy drink from small stoneware bowls. Francis is given a pewter mug engraved with the letters “H.G.” She must have gone back to the camp and taken Goodsir’s things and his body. When Francis had led a burial party, there had been no sign of Goodsir’s remains, which had been laid out so prominently. It wasn’t the Netsilik way to move a body, but Goodsir had once tried to give her father a proper burial under the ice. Perhaps she thought to repay the kindness. He holds the mug up to the lamplight and says to himself, “to Henry.” Silna starts at the name, but she takes a sip of her tea. The boy drinks too, making happy noises.

It is not proper tea of course. No milk. Before, Francis never took sugar with his tea, but the deep tannin and briny-smelling drink, made from leaves collected at the caribou hunting grounds, is best drunk sweet.

“You have wife?” Silna asks in English, perhaps because she senses the boy speaks only a little.

“Me? Oh no. I am alone. Like you.” He says, and then regrets it as soon as he’s said it. “I only mean, I have not met anyone. And anyway, who would have me? An old man who cannot hunt.”

Silna nods in agreement. Francis feels a bit stung. He would have liked her to protest a bit.

“I say spell for you to get wife,” she says pantomiming some of the words as she goes.

“Honestly, Silna. Have you nothing better to do than worry about me?” He says but the words do not translate or she is ignoring them, because she is up among her various pouches that line the walls rummaging until she finds a small ivory charm, in the shape of a woman. She hands it to him. He feels the exaggerated feminine curves in his hand He glances at the boy who is wide-eyed, wondering what will happen next. Is a woman to appear at the door like a parcel, Francis wonders? He hands the charm back to her and she takes it, seemingly-reluctantly.

“Keep your wee lady, Silna. She’ll not do for me.”

“You have other wife? In England?” She says, struggling with the last word on her broken tongue.

“No. Never. There was a girl once. But not a wife.” She tucks the charm away as quickly as she’d offered it and sits cross-legged in front of him. It dawns on him slowly that he has now volunteered to tell the story. To hint at it and not follow through would offend her sensibilities.

“Very well. But if I’m going to tell the story, I’ll need a bit more tea,” He holds out Goodsir’s mug. She adds the syrupy dregs from the pot. It is a story that calls for whiskey. Not that there is any within a thousand miles of this place. The tea will have to do.

“Her name was Sophia. She was Captain Franklin’s niece. You remember Franklin, of course?” Silna nods.

“She look like Franklin?” Silna asks, circling her hand around her own face gracefully, to underscore that she wants to know about Sophia’s appearance.

“No,” Francis laughs. “She did not. She was very beautiful with yellow hair and blue eyes.” Francis closes his eyes momentarily trying to conjure up Sophia Cracroft from memory: a blue line of jet beads set out against a stark pale throat, a warm hand curled around his, hidden beneath the sweep of her skirt. He smiles. “It was long ago and I was very far from home. One of many young men invited to a dance on a ship in Van Dieman’s Land, where Franklin was governor. I took a turn dancing with her like everyone else.” Francis says, and then pauses to explain that, unlike the Netsilik, men and women dance together where he comes from. Silna looks suspiciously at him. “It was then, while we were dancing that she asked me about my home country. I come from Ireland you see,” he says “…it is a place, green like the caribou grounds. It never freezes. We eat pigs instead of seals. A pig is kind of a seal that has four legs like a caribou. With hooves…”

Silna looks confused. How did he ever get on to pigs? He has to start again.

“I told her about my home. I told her my stories. Funny things. Memorable things that happened to me and my people. She laughed at my jokes. She seemed to like me more any other officer. I was mad about her, but I had to leave. I went down to the other side of the world. Silna, you know the other side of the world is much like this place. It is frozen there, like here. But the place has no people, no caribou. No white bears. A fat bird walks on the land.” Silna looked at him curiously. He was getting in the weeds again. “I made it back to Sophia again, this time, I was determined to make her understand my feelings. I loved her. I thought she loved me. She made me think she loved me. I asked her to be my wife. She said, ‘no.’ She wanted to marry someone else. Someone richer. Someone younger. I went away again,” he says, pausing. He has said more than he needed to. Anyway, It all sounds so small told simply like this. Small and very far away.

Silna looks back at him absorbed, sympathetic. The boy has finished his tea and is leaning on Silna, looking sleepy. So much for witches, Francis thinks.

“She married this rich man?”

“No. He would not have her.”

“She waits for you then?”

“No. I don’t know. I don’t think so. It doesn’t matter. I’m never going back.”

She nods. “I miss Harry,” she says, so clearly in English that he wonders if he dreamed it. She sits up straighter, somehow and the light, carves out her cheeks, like one of her charms. There is a look on her face… She is remembering, he thinks. She is so beautiful. How strange that he had not ever noticed it before, except to fear for her safety when she was first brought to them. Later, he supposes, he must have thought of her as belonging, in a way, to Mr. Goodsir. Yet after Goodsir’s death, in all the weeks that she had cared for him, while he lay healing on the rocks after she’d cut off his hand to save him, he had not seen it either. He had seen only himself. Felt only his own pain.

“He loved you, you know,” Francis says. “His last words to me were to ask if I thought you made it back to your people. If he had lived, I think he would have stayed here and married you.”

“I can never marry. I am to be alone. I am angakok,” she says, reverting to Natsilingmiutut.

“But your father, he was angakok too?” She shakes her head “Forgive me, but was the man you were with when we found not your father?”

“My parents were killed. He found me and kept me. Taught me his ways.”

“If the Tuunbaq had not died. Could you have married then?”

She looks at him icily. He has made some faux pas. Perhaps saying the word, “Tuunbaq” or mentioning its death.

“No, you misunderstand. I only ask to make conversation, to be polite.”

“You should not make foolish talk you don’t mean,” she says as forcefully as her tongue will allow. He had not heard her angry in a long time. It makes his blood rush. The boy stirs and looks up at Francis accusingly.

“We should be going. It’s late. The boy’s father and mother will be worried.” Silna stares at him, her face returned to a neutral expression. Yet Francis can feel her disappointment and he wants to be away He begins to look around for his mitten.

“Thank you for telling me about Harry,” she says, quietly in English. He looks back at her and her face has softened. “We were together one night.”

Francis starts at the implication, feeling his cheeks flush. It is more than he wants to hear.

“Not like that. Just together.”

He recalls an image from a dream: Silna with her arms around the surgeon, holding him to her body, for warmth, for comfort. He had forgotten it until just now. Or perhaps…He has the strangest sensation that she has made him see the image, made him feel the shivering man in her arms. He blushes again, pulling his mitten on with teeth to hide his face. And then before he can stop himself, he remembers Sophia Cracroft, bobbing naked in the platypus pond on Van Dieman’s land all those years ago. Silna raises an eyebrow. He wonders for a mad instant if she can see <i>his</i> vision in <i>her</i> head.

On the way back to their winter village, Francis swears the boy to secrecy. But it does no good. As soon as they are inside the tale is out with added embellishments about the exotic nature of Silna’s larder and her powers as a witch. “She tried to bewitch Uncle Francis, but he resisted,” he says confidently.

Francis sputters trying to think how to translate “the wrong end of the stick” into Natsilingmiutut. Hiqiniq and her husband look at one another. He sees a suppressed smile pass between the couple.

“You know, Aglooka, Silna could marry, but the man would have to be angarok too.”

This is new information. He ponders it and decides it’s meant as a warning, not as encouragement. If she had wanted him to know, she would have said.

That night, after the children are asleep, as they are sitting around a lamp, hearing Meemo tell a bawdy story about a maiden who got lost picking raspberries, Francis thinks of Silna, imagines her in the lamplight, hears her say Henry Goodsir’s Christian name so clear and perfect.

The next day Francis and the boy return to the hole in the ice. The boy runs ahead of the sled and straight into Silna’s yard. He peers in the doorway and jogs back to Francis, looking sad.

“Aglooka, she is gone. The angorok is gone!”

“Surely, not,” he says, quickening his pace. Arriving in the yard, his heart sinks. Her sled is gone. He gets down on all fours and struggles into the igloo–struggling to stay balanced on his remaining hand. Inside it is cold and dark and the walls are bare. She has cleared out. “

Silna!” the boy calls, clambering in after Francis. The boy’s face crumples in disappointment.

“Not to worry. She will be back. She always comes back,” Francis says taking his hand and squeezing it as best he can through their mittens. The boy has tears in his eyes. He is crying for his sugar, Francis thinks, but he must look away quickly, as tears sting his own eyes, too.


End file.
